TechCrunch’s much vaunted Disrupt Berlin event takes place on the 29-30th November.

Founded in 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, TechCrunch is an online American publisher which concentrates on technology industry news. It focuses specifically on profiling new tech businesses and products with analysis of emerging trends within the sector.

As an offshoot of their activities, TechCrunch Disrupt emerged in 2011 as an annual tech conference which the company organised and facilitated. Over the years the location of the event has varied with previous events held in San Francisco, New York, London and Beijing. This year’s event returns once again to Berlin.

The location is fitting given Berlin’semergence as a hub for tech startups in recent years. Each year approximately 44,000 businesses are founded in Berlin. A tech-related startup is founded in the city every20 minutes on average. It’s competitive at a global level due to the availability of an international talent pool, positive investment climate and it possesses a much more attractive living environment with excellent infrastructure and comparatively lower costs when compared to other tech hub locations around the world.

The various stakeholders in the startup scene – budding entrepreneurs, the tech media, angel investors, startup initiatives and startups at varying stages of development – all descend on Berlin over the course of the two-day event.

The Germans are old hands at facilitating events of this kind and the experience shouldn’t be any different in this instance – hosted byArena Berlin at their purpose built facility. With that backdrop, TechCrunch has built up an experience of organising these events over a number of years now – which can only serve to instil confidence in what they have in store for participants. The gathering will bring together founders, hackers, entrepreneurs and tech innovators in just over a months time.

Guest Speaker Line-up Confirmed

TechCrunch Editor,Mike Butcher, took to Twitter to announce the line-up for the event:

Well, I’ve been working on this for the last few months, so it’s good to finally announcing the TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin agenda https://t.co/YZ6YZevFhj

Whilst not showing their full hand, TechCrunch Disrupt has provided an insight into the majority of their speakers at the event.

On Thursday morning Lucas Di Grassi, CEO ofRoborace takes centre stage. Di Grassi is a former F1 motor racing driver and his company seeks to become the first global championship platform for autonomous cars. It has been testing its technology and race formats on the same tracks as used by theFormula E Championship.

Anne Kjaer-Riechart (ReDI School of Digital Integration ) and Aline Sara (NaTakallam) will speak to efforts to both up-skill and integrate recently received refugees in Germany through technology and language-based training.

Peter van der Does – founder of payments companyAyden – will provide an insight into the development of his company, having built it up via an IPO process to the significant entity it is today.

There are a host of other speakers in the line-up which you can check outhere.

Keynote speeches form just one aspect of the two-day conference. The well regarded Startup Battlefield competition is just one of a number of features of the broader event. If facilitates early-stage startups in competing for the coveted Disrupt Cup, a $50,000 prize – together with the focus that acclaim will bring from the tech media and investors.

In addition to that, 400 pre-series A startups will have the chance to showcase their tech products and services by way ofStartup Alley. Whilst many of the participants in this instance are paid exhibitors, TechCrunch has also selected‘Top Picks’ over a number of categories.

Another feature of the event isCrunchMatch – a free business matchmaking service that connects investors and founders. To facilitate this in a more advanced way, the event networking application of partner companyBrella will be used to match up participants.

Testcard CEO Luke Heron lauded the feature having experienced it at last years event:

“We used the CrunchMatch platform to schedule a meeting with six or seven VCs and, by and large, they were very positive meetings.”

Subsequently, Heron achieved funding to the tune of $1.7 million.

Last Opportunity For Discounted Tickets

As an official media partner of the event, TechCrunch is offering a 15% discount for 150sec readers using the following link ( code: 150SEC). Cut off date for this offer is October 24th.

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